I. Laws relating to the Constitution.—Sulla deprived the Comitia Tributa of their legislative and judicial powers; but he allowed them to elect the Tribunes, Ædiles, Quæstors, and other inferior magistrates. This seems to have been the only purpose for which they were called together. The Comitia Centuriata, on the other hand, were allowed to retain their right of legislation unimpaired. He restored, however, the ancient regulation, which had fallen into desuetude, that no matter should be brought before them without the previous sanction of a senatus consultum.
The Senate had been so much reduced in numbers by the proscriptions of Sulla, that he was obliged to fill up the vacancies by the election of three hundred new members. But he made no alteration in their duties and functions, as the whole administration of the state was in their hands; and he gave them the initiative in legislation by requiring a previous senatus consultum respecting all measures that were to be submitted to the Comitia, as already stated.
With respect to the magistrates, Sulla increased the number of Quæstors from eight to twenty, and of Prætors from six to eight. He renewed the old law that no one should hold the Prætorship before he had been Quæstor, nor the Consulship before he had been Prætor. He also renewed the law that no one should be elected to the same magistracy till after the expiration of ten years.
One of the most important of Sulla's reforms related to the Tribunate, which he deprived of all real power. He took away from the Tribunes the right of proposing a rogation of any kind to the Tribes, or of impeaching any person before them; and he appears to have limited the right of intercession to their giving protection to private persons against the unjust decisions of magistrates, as, for instance, in the enlisting of soldiers. To degrade the Tribunate still lower, Sulla enacted that whoever had held this office forfeited thereby all right to become a candidate for any of the higher curule offices, in order that all persons of rank, talent, and wealth might be deterred from holding an office which would be a fatal impediment to rising any higher in the state. He also required persons to be Senators before they could become Tribunes.
II. Laws relating to the Ecclesiastical Corporations.—Sulla repealed the Lex Domitia, which gave to the Comitia Tributa the right of electing the members of the great ecclesiastical corporations, and restored to the latter the right of co-optatio, or self-election. At the same time, he increased the number of Pontiffs and Augurs to fifteen respectively.
III. Laws relating to the Administration of Justice.—Sulla established permanent courts for the trial of particular offenses, in each of which a Prætor presided. A precedent for this had been given by the Lex Calpurnia of the Tribune L. Calpurnius Piso, in B.C. 149, by which it was enacted that a Prætor should preside at all trials for Repetundæ during his year of office. This was called a Quæstio Perpetua, and nine such Quæstiones Perpetuæ were established by Sulla, namely, De Repetundis, Majestatis, De Sicariis et Veneficis, De Parricidio, Peculatus, Ambitus, De Nummis Adulterinis, De Falsis or Testamentaria, and De Vi Publica. Jurisdiction in civil cases was left to the Prætor Peregrinus and the Prætor Urbanus as before, and the other six Prætors presided in the Quæstiones; but as the latter were more in number than the Prætors, some of the Prætors took more than one Quæstio, or a Judex Quæstionis was appointed. The Prætors, after their election, had to draw lots for their several jurisdictions. Sulla enacted that the Judices should be taken exclusively from the Senators, and not from the Equites, the latter of whom had possessed this privilege, with a few interruptions, from the law of C. Gracchus, in B.C. 123. This was a great gain for the aristocracy, since the offenses for which they were usually brought to trial, such as bribery, malversation, and the like, were so commonly practiced by the whole order, that they were, in most cases, nearly certain of acquittal from men who required similar indulgence themselves.
Sulla's reform in the criminal law, the greatest and most enduring part of his legislation, belongs to a history of Roman law, and can not be given here.